But they feel the same about their work as we do about ours

Some do. Some are always totally in your face about how wonderful they are and how you're wasting your time doing the work that you do.

If they have to big themselves up in front of others and put down their work, they're not actually as confident as they make out to be

I wish we had half term....

Are you going to get any sort of holiday in the near future?

No.

Holidays are expensive. My last holiday was a few days in the Lake District in June 2000.

I've been on an extended holiday for 6 months or so. Not really though because I'm meant to write my thesis

Now a half term break in the sun would be lovely

You are writing your thesis.

Oh dear. Do you at least get some time when you don't have to do a lot?



Yes, it would. The weather here today is grim, and a bit of warmth would be very welcome...

Could you get a cheap-ish last minute deal at all?

In these days of internet deals and suchlike, there are often some excellent deals out there, Flossie

I've got too much too do. I don't think I'd want to go on my own anyways.

Take some friends

Take Barry

Advantage of taking friends = sharing costs = cheaper

Plus, and much more importantly than the above, it's so much more fun with more than one person!

12/24 students is not what I call a good turnout for a compulsory session. Do they want their degrees?

50%?

Perhaps a gentle explanation of what 'compulsory' means is in order...

They all had an email from the module convener yesterday after a similar turnout...

In that case, maybe a second email along the lines of 'if you can't be bothered to consistently attend compulsory lectures without good reason, then we can't be bothered to award you a degree...' might do the trick...

Can you imagine how many academic appeals that would create?

The exam board spend weeks going through appeals each summer as it is.

I can...

It would focus the mind rather well though, an email like that...

Meeting went ok



My chapter isn't awful... but apparently I have weird paragraph breaks and don't use enough full stops

that's good. Onwards and upwards Claudia!

That sounds good. Paragraph breaks and full stops are easy to change. If those are the main things that need to be changed in the chapter, then you really haven't got that much work to do to revise it.

But I don't know what to do with the full stops

I suspect that some of your commas, colons and semicolons should be full stops. I'm happy to have a look if you think it would help, but won't have time this week or next.

It's ok, thanks I'll have a read through it to see if I can mke some changes

He also said that he wanted the next chapter more finished than this one. I'm really not sure how that'll happen

They get easier to finish as you go on. The earlier chapters are harder to finish because you can't really finish them until you know what the other chapters are going to say.

The best suggestion I've had for inserting full stops etc was to read every sentence aloud. If you stumble, it needs rewriting. Try to turn passive voice things active it at all possible (guaranteed to shorten a sentence) though obviously this is often difficult in technical writing.

Full stops... try to spot any sentence that runs over two lines. It probably has lots of commas, and will probably thank you for being broken up. If you can be bothered, getting to grips with colons and semi-colons is also useful! I came across a really good book recently entitled "A Guide to Writing for Engineers" which helped a lot.

I'm still shockingly wordy though (as I'm sure you all well know!) but it has resulted in most of the reports I create for work getting down below 2 pages...

Thanks all. Guess it's lots of reading and restructuring for me I'll have to proofread more carefully in the future too even though I read it a good few times

I'm sort of pleased that he didn't say too much about the actual content, I guess. It'll be off to the next supervisor once I'm done.....

I've been at uni for an hour. hmm.

Have you done anything interesting since 6am?

Worked. Yawned lots.

'Work' and '6am' is just not fair on you, Claudia...

I couldn't sleep, it entirely my choice to get in for this stupid time

OK Hope you've got plenty of coffee and cereal bars around then!

Eeep caffeine hyper

I'm just boiling the kettle.

I'll never sleep tonight

I didn't last night. It was so cold that you could see my breath and I couldn't get warm enough. I went to sleep when the heating came on in the morning.

I slept last night but woke up at 3. I couldn't get back to sleep so I got up at 4 and went to uni at half 5.

So you were leaving your house as I was going to sleep.

Basically

Clearly, coffee was present!...

Unfortunately the coffee was only there once I got home. I had about 3 cups of coffee and one cup of tea between me going home and going to bed.



When I went to bed I didn't feel too good

Oh dear...

Have you got another busy day in front of you?

As busy as I want to make it.



The less busy I make it, the longer this will take

OK, fair enough!

Remember, all work and no play makes Claudia very tired!

All work and no sleep but lots of caffeine makes Claudia very hyper